Global Actions and Flag System

Hi guys,

This is a funny update because it's both directed towards complete beginners as well as power users who want to get the most out of their ALM driven scenes. Update is available as always on Mega - v.75.

What does this update change:

• Let's say you want to create a simple scene where all actions are available from the start. The steps to achieve this are now as simple as defining those actions and marking them as "Global". The actions will immediately become available to Voxta and no further action is needed. This state can now be observed in ALM Inspector (expanded version of the chat window). By the way inspector has now became much more reliable as it shares the same ground truth for the actions that are used for Voxta action list itself.

• Now let's say you are an advanced user and your scene revolves more around boolean states (flags) like: sitting, standing, tired, angry, than on a history forming into a tree of choices (routing). You might also simply prefer this type of thinking. Good message for you is that my early implementation of the flag system is now completely substituted and merged with Voxta flag system. In advanced section of each action you can find the "Set Flags" input field that enables you to set any number of flags after calling this action. The flags are set and unset by "sitting" and "!sitting" labels. Then you have the "Condition" field which enables you to form logical conditions like "(flagOne || flagTwo) && !flagThree". After defining an action like this it will again immediately be available or not basing on the current state of the flags.

• Important thing to understand is that now ActionsList is updated real-time (once every second if it detects any change). This means that you can affect it even if the inference did not take place. Technically you could do it before with a User action but it's now even more flexible

Pieces of advice:

• All types of actions can be marked global.

• Any mixture of routing and flag based system is also allowed so in cases where your story has a tree like structure but some actions have to be added/removed by state flags you should use both of them.

• To bootstrap a desired set of flags on the scene start please use MacGruber's EventSceneLoad logic brick.

• The flags are persisted with the conversations themselves and the chat ids are persisted with the VaM scenes. This means that the set of flags that you ended up with will be kept on scene load.

• Flags state is not yet visible in ALM Inspector. If you'd like to see them please inspect the chat in Voxta App. This will be a subject of change in the next release.

Small change serious consequences:

• I always knew that Global actions need to come to ALM in one for or another but the idea needed to mature. The implementation also changed A LOT of the core ALM code written more than a year ago.

• That's why I'd like to thank all the people that donated their personal time to test this release for you. They are: Jabawack, iceboy99 and Saint. Thank you again guys !!

What's next:

• ALM 101 training

• Bundles

Merry Christmas and take care !!